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InternetVoting writes "California has passed a bill banning companies from requiring employees to have RFID chips surgically implanted. Already one company has been licensed by the federal government, implanting more than 2000 people. At least one other company — CityWatcher.com, a Cincinnati video surveillance company — already required RFID implants in some employees. 'State Sen. Joe Simitian (D-Palo Alto) proposed the measure after at least one company began marketing radio frequency identification devices for use in humans. "RFID is a minor miracle, with all sorts of good uses," Simitian said. "But we shouldn't condone forced 'tagging' of humans. It's the ultimate invasion of privacy.'"

this comment is telling "Nine senators opposed the measure, including Bob Margett (R-Arcadia), who said it is premature to legislate technology that has not yet proved to be a problem. "It sounded like it was a solution looking for a problem," Margett said. "It didn't seem like it was necessary."" ah yes, not necessary now, but it is necessary to stop you in your tracks from even going down this road in the first place...

Unfortunately I have to agree with Mr. Smith here. In a free-market capitalist society, no one has a 'right' to a job that they want. If the working conditions in one field are unacceptible, you must find a new field or lower your standards.

It's not nice, but capitalism seldom is nice unless the government steps in and makes some rules (as they are doing here).

Unlike a cow, an employee can tell the employer to go and take a running jump, as any sane person would.

That is, assuming they're in a financial position to quit their job, or are so highly in demand in their field, that they can find an equivalent position at a moment's notice.

That's a rather large assumption to make. You may well be in that position, but what about the millions of people who don't have the advantages you do? Don't they deserve better than being tracked like freight in a supply chain?

RFID tags were originally designed to assist in inventory tracking and management, so implanting employees is effectively treating them as inventory. Since they are alive, you are actually treating them as cattle. And any sane employee would look at the bills they have to pay every month and realise that they can't afford to quit their job, then go and get the implantation. It's not as easy a choice as most people think.

Actually what happens is that the employer making unreasonable requests loses their best employees who simply go to a competitor, taking their knowledge, experience, contacts with them.

It appears that you never studied the history of the late 19th century. Or, perhaps you are fine with supervisors "sampling" your wife and daughter? Hey, if you don't like it, you can go somewhere else, right? Except everyone is doing it and you can only be a factor worker, no matter how smart you are, just because you we

"Whenever the legislature attempts to regulate the differences between masters and their workmen, its counsellors are always the masters. When the regulation, therefore, is in favour of the workmen, it is always just and equitable; but it is sometimes otherwise when in favour of the masters." -- Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations, Book 1 Chapter 10

Free market capitalism does not require blind acceptance of any working conditions, in fact, abuse that potentially damages workers or reduces their motivation, capacity and desire for work damages the very engine of wealth creation in society, ruining the greatest asset the economy has.

Adam Smith most certainly recognized the disparity in power between employers and employees, and while there are a whole lot of people who like to twist the idea of free market capitalism into an anything-goes feast for the new aristocracy and corporate owners, the fact is that the state has many legitimate roles in a free market. As long as it stays away from protecting the owners and investors from competition.

It's the employee's body. His temple.Nobody should be able to say what to do with it or how to treat it as a job requirement.Besides, the employee also has a choice of quiting the job. What would they do about the surgery and the rfid then?

Anyhow, if this tech ever becomes widespread I may turn to a life of crime. IT would just be too easy to tell if anyone were home or not. Just drive up and down the street with a van equipped w/a powerful rfid scanner and voila.

Suppose you're raising two kids, and you need job stability. And your company says that you have to get an RFID chip implanted, or else you're fired. Do you leave your job with a chance that your kids might starve, since you can't get unemployment insurance because you left "voluntarily"? Or do you accept that you have to get tagged like an animal? Although, I can agree for some positions where security is of the utmost importance (perhaps if you have access to nuclear material or something), and the terms are agreed upon before hand...

Although, I can agree for some positions where security is of the utmost importance (perhaps if you have access to nuclear material or something), and the terms are agreed upon before hand...

If an RFID tag can be implanted surgically, it can also be removed and re-implanted into someone else. Consequently, it won't provide any extra security against anyone who is willing to steal nuclear materials for presumably nefarious purposes: they simply capture and kill an employee and take the tag from his cold, dead body.

Sure, you could associate identifying information - fingerprints, faceprints, retina scan, whatever - with the tag, but you could just as easily associate it with normal passcard. No, the only "benefit" from the RFID is that it lets you more easily identify people in casual settings (streets and such). It isn't a security measure, but simply another step towards having everyone tracked 24/7, or in best possible case, just someone's private little power game.

Absolutely right. In real terms it provides little more security than an ID card or something. I read somewhere in Asia a rich guy with a state of the art Merc had his finger chopped off when his car was stolen. The car only responded to his fingerprint you see . . .

Well, there's a little straw in there. Your kids are not going to starve, other forms of support are available. And, it could easily be argued that you are grandfathered in and their requirement would constitute violating their contract with you. State dependent.

Ok, the alternative would actually be.. the company can't operate securely. Therefore, they will not be able to make as much money.. and be able to hire less workers.

So then you are left in a jobless position ANYWAY -- PLUS the world is deprived of whatever service that company was offering... then what happens to your kids then.. not only are you jobless but the economy in general & quality of life in general will be crappy for them.

Actually, your analysis is idiotic - and wrong.

An RFID chip can be removed and implanted in someone else - as already noted by others... or it's "code" can be duplicated to make it seem like one person is someone they are not (kinda like the car lock buttons and the numerous devices to copy the codes to steal cars). It can and will happen.

There are other technologies that are even more secure... visually matching the employee to a picture in the database at the security station, fingerprints (more difficult to cut off someone's finger than to duplicate their RFID chip), retina scans, etc.

Chances are, any of the technologies I listed are cheaper than RFID tagging someone sub-cutaneously... so why choose a more expensive, more likely to be rendered useless, more invasive method such as RFID tagging people?

The problem is, it doesn't work like that. If you give the rich and powerful enough unchecked power, freedom of choice is either (A) taken from you, because they make a deal, or (B) meaningless, as it went down a spiral where everyone does the same things.

As an example of the former, you can see the last centuries of Rome and the introduction of serfdom. The rich clique that formed the senate:

1. proclaimed themselves not subject to tax

2. raised taxes on everyone else, especially the free peasants (land was the most common pension for soldiers and recruitment incentive, so they eventually had quite a few) to support the ever increasing costs of warfare and the luxury in Rome

3. tried to fix prices _and_ devalue the coin, by law. There goes some of your freedom right there, as a free peasant or small landowner: they already tell you what your produce is worth, and it just became half of what you got for it last year.

4. when people started moving away as a result, they just forbade everyone to move, effectively turning all free peasants into serfs of the empire. In one fell swoop.

I'm sure those peasants still thought they have a choice before step 3. Unfortunately after step 4 it started going downhill fast, and eventually they were not only tied to the land and taxed, but had to work 3 days a week for the local noble too, and some 15 centuries later it had become 6 days a week and no land of their own at all. In some places (e.g., some Polish revolts were against that), serfs could not only be sold, but also rented by burghers, merchants, whatever. The long and painful slide from a free peasant class back to effective slavery, eh?

As a _probable_ example of the latter, well, you can learn a lot about what problems a society had, by the laws they give. That Moses forbade working on Sabbath on penalty of _death_, should tell you that they probably had a _major_ problem there. It also gives you the idea that probably nothing else worked, choice be damned.

At some point, even if you forbid by law to _require_ working on the Sabbath, people will just find weasel ways to require "volunteering" for it. (See the recent EA scandal.) So at some point your choice becomes picking one of X potential employers, all of which require it. You have a choice to take it or starve.

The death penalty on workers on Sabbath is, if you think about it, the ultimate way to stop asking for it right in its tracks. There is no reward someone can promise you, in exchange for maybe getting stoned to death, and no threat they could use to make anyone accept that. Maybe religion could work to motivate someone to go to death, but here religion is what forbade that in the first place. Basically it attacked the supply side of labour, not the demand side.

It makes me wonder how bad it had got, at the very least.

At any rate, sometimes you have to restrict people's "choice" to accept being kicked in the head, because otherwise it can very soon degenerate into something where you have no choice to refuse it.

Finally, don't get me wrong, I'm not against the rich or capitalism... as such. It's just that when one side has disproportionately more bargaining power and power to subvert the system, at some point you have to restrict what they can do with it. Otherwise, if left unchecked, they'll just figure out a way to turn everyone else into their serfs. See, the Romans again.

Yes, how history does repeat. The downside is that until there was a significant drop population, that bubonic plague thing, there was no positive change for the commoner. Once there were not enough serfs to till the fields or serve as Men at Arms, conditions leveled out for all.

That's very insightful, but unfortunately, it's even worse than that. (If one can really say worse than the plague.)

1. Not for all. Eastern Europe, for example, was already sparsely populated enough that the plagues had no major impact. So there serfdom continued to be a downwards slide until the 19'th century. I've already given the example of Poland, but things got even worse in Russia, for example.

2. It took some very bloody revolts to really get a positive change, even with the plague. The ruling class didn't just start giving better salaries and conditions when western Europe depopulated. The first (and second and third) attempt again was to fix prices and try to force everyone to work more for less pay, so they can keep their luxury and privileges with less population.

As an example of it, in England and France which were having a jolly good 100 years war, the first effect of the population halving was that the levies on each peasant doubled.

1. Roman "democracy" was by and large a democracy of the rich. When they voted on anything, the entire population of Rome was divided into 193 centuries, by economic class, and they voted by century. One vote per century. And 98 centuries were made of the senators and the equites. So they may have had a lot of poor, but the rich had the majority of votes by definition. Furthermore, voting stopped completely when they had a majority of 97 centuries either for or against, so quite routinely the poorest never had a chance to cast any vote.

That's democracy of the rich for you, seriously.

2. You have to remember that welfare and populism were limited to the city of Rome itself. No more, no less. If you wanted to vote to tax Egypt or the Gaul to hand out more bread in Rome, everyone would be for it.

Fixing prices for the peasants outside Rome to give cheap bread to the plebs in Rome would have been insanely popular at any point.

3. The only political office I can remember offhand that _required_ one to be a plebeian, was the Tribune Of The Plebs. The requirement seemed to be very flexible however. Remember that Octavian Augustus, among the many titles he accumulated in one hand as Imperator was also a Tribune Of The Plebs. If you can genuinely believe that he was a poor commoner, I have some logging rights to sell in Sahara. They were also routinely bribed by the rich.

4. The late Western Roman Empire was more... weird. Not everything you learned about the peak of the republic still applied. They had increasingly deranged emperors, the praetorian guard started installing and removing emperors itself, they had a _major_ civil war over who gets to be Augustus (emperor) and who gets to be Caesar (vice-emperor) in the tetrarchy, etc. Basically the Western Roman Empire in the 3-4th century AD isn't quite what you've learned about the Roman Republic.

5. Well, just because some people argue nonsense, it doesn't mean they can really rewrite history. What happened, well, already happened, whether the right-wing think-tanks like it or not. Plus, there are a lot of people who are disillusioned with the present and retreat in some rose-tinted illusion that the past was some gentle and noble utopia. (And I don't mean only in modern times, but also see the Renaissance.) Unfortunately, it never really was that great. Even more unfortunately, that sanitized illusion makes them easy to manipulate by those think-tanks I've already mentioned.

And yes, I'm not surprised that the rich in the USA, who want more political power for themselves, would try to paint it that way. "See, giving us more power is good, giving power to the poor is bad." It's only expected, I guess. Unfortunately that's not what actually happened in the real history.

You are confusing some Roman terms with the modern usage of the same terms.

First off the Senate in Rome was never democratic in nature, even in the days of the Republic, never mind during the Empire. The Senate of the United States bears almost no resemblance to the Roman Senate. (Argumentative old men not withstanding).

The democratic radicalism that destabilised the later Roman Republic was not embodied by the election of senators but through other more popularist institutions. The political structure of the Roman Republic was fairly complex, it had been in existence for around 500 years by the end.

Plebeian was not a class distinction, it was a distinction of descent. Some families were 'Patrician' by descent, others 'Plebeian', it was a hangover from some early Roman history. By the late Republic the distinction had zero bearing on wealth, influence or political power. Class distinctions were made on property qualifications, i.e. land ownership and income.

This is all a bit by the by as in the middle and late Imperial period (which is the period the poster was describing) any vestiges of the old Republic were exactly that, vestiges. The Emperor was an absolute monarch and the Senate was an advisory talking shop of yes-men appointed by the Emperor, at best.

You have to remember the timescales here. From the early Republic to the days of Augustus is a period of about 500 years. That is a lot of complex history. Then from Augustus to the fall of the Western Empire there is another 500 years. The time of Senatorial government in Rome is separated from the period described by the previous poster by the same length of time that separates modern United States history from Columbus' voyages.

You're from the USA, right? Well, then I'm not surprised that you don't get it. You've had that sociopathic clique tell you all the time that the only way the economy and freedom can _possibly_ work is if you let them have more power, and that any other way leads to slavery and poverty.Unfortunately, I'm from Europe, and here we're living proof that it doesn't work that way. Look in the G8 who's in there besides the USA, and you'll find such countries as the left-wing Germany and the pretty socialist France

Dude, do you even realize that you're trying to tell someone who actually lives down here that you know better than him how his country works? Heh. It's like me telling one of your astronauts that I know better than him what riding a space shuttle is _really_ like. Geesh.And really... the rich classes are for socialism? Heh. Well, I'm glad that they'd approve of the fact that here in Germany unions are officially given a lot of power and get a say in how corporations are run. I'm soo sure that if you took a

That's akin to the online applications that require you to answer everything from your criminal history (with exceptions for some states) to your beliefs and attitudes. It used to be you just didn't apply with that company if you didn't want to go through all the BS, but now it's so widespread you can't get a job at your local grocer without it.

Nobody is forcing them to work where implants are required, there's plenty of other places to work for the people to chose from, if they don't like it, they can go work somewhere else.

I stand by my "real world" comment.

Unemployment rates are high in the western world, and that ignores the fact that most published numbers are average. My company has a branch in one city where unemployment is just short of 20%. If you are not one of the few people with knowledge and/or experience that is actually in demand, you do not have the choice to "go work somewhere else". Your choice is more along the lines of living on unemployment money or moving someplace else where there might be jobs - if you can afford to move, that is.

I work in a position where I have first-hand experience of just how these things work. A lot of the people who ask me for advise would like to quit, except that they can't afford to do it. They've got a car, or a house, that they need to pay, and being unemployed for even a few months might mean losing that.

Now tell me, when you have to choose between you and your family becoming homeless, and getting an implant - how much "choice" do you really have?

Can you even answer that question? Do you support a family?

implants are no different than requiring that employees follow a dress code.

Except that you can remove your company dress when you go home, at weekends, or when you quit. You can not seriously believe that doesn't make a massive difference.

How the hell does 90% of the country end up being so far in debt and vulnerable to being jobless even for a few months?

Again, you ignore reality. Anything of this kind (i.e. that causes resistance) is introduced to those who can fight back the least first. Do you think managers or even department heads will be chipped first? Do you really believe the first to receive a mandatory (aka "or you can work somewhere else") implant will be the important thinking people that actually can leave?

I deal with the CEO and HR-head level daily. I think I have a fairly good understanding of how they think and work. The uncomfortable, bad

I personally knew two who had plenty of savings and were highly skilled (no kids, either). They didn't like the idea of testing at all, but they valued their jobs more. Several people told me they respected me for what I was doing, but said they had kids to worry about. Well, I don't think kids would go starving (food stamps), and I really doubt all these people were living on the edge.

Did potential employers hold your principles against you?

Turns out I never had to find out. The policy was announced at a company meeting as something that was going to happe

Im a christian, And i should hope any other person who considers themselves a christian would see this stuff for what it really is. Just another step toward a mark of the beast system.

Revelation 13:16-17 (King James Version)
16 And he causeth all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark in their right hand, or in their foreheads:
17 And that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name.

I think one of the reasons we (and the courts) talk about bodily sovreignty in terms of privacy is because of Griswold v. Connecticut [wikipedia.org], the contraception ruling that preceeded Roe v. Wade. There it was asserted that there's a "right to privacy" sort of hidden in the other rights. Anyway, since that strain of the law has ended up influencing lots of "hands of my body" laws, not only Roe, the "right to privacy" gets trotted out quite a bit when something similar shows up. I agree that it's a euphemism and not

This one, I don't get - at all. I can conjure up no possible positive reason for the implanting of RFID tags in the human body. It is the ultimate intrusion, both figuratively and physically.

Nine senators opposed the measure, including Bob Margett (R-Arcadia), who said it is premature to legislate technology that has not yet proved to be a problem.

What a maroon. Why the hell is it a problem to preemptively act against activity that one doesn't like the look of? Have we got to the point that a technology has to become a *problem* before we can thoughtfully act to restrict or focus its use?

I find this trend somewhat short-sighted. RFID of course has many uses, but it is known to have several vulnerabilities when used for security purposes. I can imagine what some of them are, but I'm not a security researcher so I won't speculate. However, the reliance specifically on surgically embedded RFID chips may fall quite easily into the trap laid by "security by difficulty."

Most of us agree that "security by obscurity" is a bad thing. Relying on closed code and hidden private keys (cough DRM cough) to ensure security just doesn't work well in the end. However, there is a tendency to have more faith in security which relies entirely on the difficulty of achieving some goal. In the case of mechanical locks, this is quite obvious and locks have been designed this way for centuries, the level of "difficulty" based on current technological knowledge and the known level of skill of lock pickers.

In software, we see "difficulty" being important for public-key encryption, which is the corner stone of many cryptographic paradigms. The difficulty, in this case, is finding a pair of primes which can be multiplied to get the private key. However, in this case we can use mathematics to formally identify the time required, according to current technology, to perform this calculation. Thus, we can have some very good, provable assurance that a particular algorithm won't be broken by brute force methods. (Until the next technological breakthrough... quantum cryptography? But that, we are told, is assuredly still far in the future..)

Now, here we have a tendency to embed an identification chip in a person, so that you can be sure that this person is who they say they are. After all, once a chip is embedded surgically, there's no way it can be wrong, right?

Unfortunately this logic is way too dependent on the current idea that surgery is a difficult thing. Already there exist plastic surgeries that take less than a week to recover from. Even the procedure in question I'm sure is quite minor and takes no time at all. So how does embedding a chip in someone add to the sense of security? It's perfectly imaginable to me that in the near future there will be devices which can easily inject such chips into the skin or remove them without requiring a doctor present at all.

So that is why I fail to understand this idea. Even after considering the man-in-the-middle attacks and several other ways to break RFID security, I cannot see that relying in surgical implantation will help much in terms of security. You may as well just get a magnetic card reader so that employees can use their ID cards to get in, and be done with it. Relying on surgery or even fingerprints/retina identification will only add to a false sense of security, as any of these can be fooled. And yes, someone eager enough to break into a high-tech workplace to steal data is going to be be smart enough to have thought of several ways to do it before breakfast.

I'm afraid that when it comes to physical security, people are still better at doing it than machines, and I believe this will be the case for some time.

They would not support this kind of 'efficiency'. I'm afraid that in the world, the excuse of using technology because "it's just easier this way" has in fact lead to atrocities that will be remembered for a thousand years.

It starts out as a labor issue and they tell you it's ok because you don't have to work there. Then they give them to all convicts. Then mental patients, then the ex-sex offenders, then bullshit pot bust people, then the DUIs, then the green card holders then it becomes an automatic step in the arrest process then your car insurance needs it then your health insurance then your bank and still they keep telling you that if you have nothing to hide you have nothing to fear. And if you don't want to use a bank no one is making you. Then everyone in the armed forces gets one then everyone on the public service payroll then all the welfare recipients, then all the school children, then everyone working for a company that has any government contract, then any passport holder. And whoever's left is corralled into special camps. Trust me, I've seen this before.

Such a good point. The usage creeps - everything does. Why do people not see this?Seriously I would guess we are less than 10 years away from the full scenario you outline.

In my country, the UK, you get DNA swabbed automatically on arrest. They've already got 10% the population now and then soon you'll need it for a passport. Before you know it we're in Gattica meets 1984 meets Brave New World and there will be no way around this except the collapse of the electrical grid. (And then things get really nasty)

Really? The wireless equivalent of a bar code is the ultimate invasion of privacy? Not, say, ECHELON, or warrantless phone tapping, or a city filled with cameras? It's an RFID chip? Interesting. And all this time I thought the ultimate invasion of privacy would look more like a helmet cam. Silly me.

Everyone is caught up in this notion of "your body is your temple", and that, you have an inviolate right to your body, and, I'd argue that you don't. There's nothing that you do with your body that is without social consequence, from the food you eat, water you drink, the air you breath, and the waste you make. Really, the whole "it's my body" argument that women have when defining abortion rights or even the notion of "reproductive rights" is utterly laughable. The tribe ultimately has every right to b

Employees are not owned by their employers. If being employed means surrendering the sovereignty of your body to an employer by accepting an implant then this equates employees with cattle or sheep that are being tagged for identification before slaughter.

Again, freedom of contract is not without limits. You cannot enter into contracts to be denied inalienable (incapable of being alienated, surrendered, or transferred) rights. Ownership of your body is widely recognized as an inalienable right.

Not if they calm down, get a chance not go on defensive all the time and think it through. But when they constantly find themselves defending their right to sneeze without looking for a government permission, they do overreach in demanding how little the government intervenes.

There are two kinds of libertarians [wikipedia.org]: the ones who recognize only "the government" as a source of oppressive force, and those who realize that any group may become sufficiently powerful as to be able to prevent free exercise of one's natural rights. (The wikipedia article splits libertarians into different subsets, but I believe that my basis here is complete, if not orthogonal.)

Unfortunately, the former group gets much more press than the latter, and has largely gotten the terminology to refer only to them even among liberty dorks like us. The former group (among many other bizarre positions) would object strongly to a national credit rating system that dictated where and how you could live if it was run by the government, but have no objection against the credit system we have today simply because its officials are unelected. At the risk of igniting a flame war, Noam Chomsky's writings on anarchism should be read by libertarians or simply "people interested in freedom" just as much as Ayn Rand's.

There are two kinds of libertarians [wikipedia.org]: the ones who recognize only "the government" as a source of oppressive force, and those who realize that any group may become sufficiently powerful as to be able to prevent free exercise of one's natural rights.

I obviously have been hanging out in the wrong circles, because I hadn't previously heard about this distinction. That's the problem with broad "ism" labels. They're fairly easily co-opted.

Hee hee, yes. I wouldn't call it a "distinction" exactly, because the terminology itself is in a bit of a battle. The "Libertarian Party" I'm sure is in the former category. Because of the Ayn Randian image of libertarianism in the world at large, the latter category has different words (e.g., "Xian anarchist" -- but of course, anarchism is not the most public friendly term either!) Not to resurrect that "nerds are libertarian" story, but I think nerds often fall towards the latter category in spirit if not

Actually, your flip "simply because its officials are unelected" isn't really true. The type of libertarian you refer to would say that all businesses/organizations in a free market are elected, directly, when you choose to give them your money in return for whatever it is that they promise to do for you.Now.. don't get me wrong.. I don't agree with that. But a fundamental libertarian premise is that the free market is a robust construction most able to deal with shifting needs of a society, while governm

I know you're playing Devil's Advocate, but that's a strange notion of "election". Most "elections" that distributed significantly different voting powers to people would not be considered such!

The idol of the free market is relatively new in libertarian thought (modulo the terminology battles again, of course.) Libertarians you can historically connect with the strands today were around well before robust theories of the free market. I think if you time-translated some of the "founding fathers" you'd fi

would not be considered such by who? by egalitarian pseudo-democratic idealists, sure. But history has a long history of plutocracy! And modern conservatives often don't try very hard to hide that basis of their own bias... money is free speech, remember?I'll concede I have no idea of the history of libertarian thought.. I've only been involved with the modern counterparts.

I also make a habit of ignoring "founding fathers", since many of them had diametrically opposed ideals, it's hard to address them as

Depends which founding fathers they cite, as well! If they go with Proudhon ("property is theft"), well, there's definitely something up. In many cases, the intellectual history of contemporary "Libertarian Party" libertarianism goes back to "liberalism" in the Enlightenment sense -- again, well before we really had the contemporary notions of the free market.

Adam Smith, by the way, was definitely not a free market ideologue, and "the invisible hand" as we currently understand it is very different from h

Ok, seriously, when did Ayn Rand become the spokesman for Libertarianism? I'll take Milton Friedman over Ayn Rand any day. She makes statements that are provably logically inconsistent. This is all fun and good when trying to inspire a religion, but not when trying to establish a basis for a philosophy. My favorite phrase from Atlas Shrugged: "...and the two corollary axioms are..."

C'mon, you can't view her writing as anything more than self-help books. I won't even mention that her system of the worl

I certaintly don't advocate Ayn Rand as a philosopher! But she is the distillation of a very powerful idea/fanatasy. It's also important to have some idea of what she's saying becaus so many people -- including people in government (e.g., Greenspan [wikipedia.org] was an acolyte -- believe very deeply in her parables. Friedman, by the way, was a Rand fan to a certain extent [reason.com]. By and large, the academic philosophical community has ignored Rand but I remember a famous old prof (was it Nozick?) did finally get sick of hearing

Umm.. Greenspan was not a political figure though. His job was to be distanced from politics and to just crunch the numbers. Well, that was the job of the establishment that he headed. It was always a fear that putting monetary controls in the hands of the government might yield to political pressures. Of course, with anyone appointed by the current administration no chance at being corrupt has been passed, so... they do just that... yield to political pressure http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20 [bloomberg.com]

I've watched Newsies enough times to know that if they don't like what their corporation is doing, they can strike. I do find it ridiculous that a company would make their employees get RFID chips, but if the employee is stupid enough to work there...

On the other hand, I can't think of a legitimate use of an RFID tag for a human. It's range isn't far enough to be useful for rescue workers who were trapped or searching for trapped people. Perhaps as an enhanced version of dog tags, but even then it seems

Well, no. Roman citizens could enter into a contract making them gladiators. So no, freedom of contract is not without limits. You cannot enter into contracts to be denied inalienable (incapable of being alienated, surrendered, or transferred) rights. Ownership of your body is widely recognized as an inalienable right.

I think it is far more likely that such a program would be adopted voluntarily. For instance stores could offer incesntives to chipped customers - give them a 10% discount, or design special speedy checkout lanes. They wouldn't get all of their customers this way, but they could probably get most of them to participate. Perhaps retailers could get together and design some sort of 'consumer chip' that could identify with multiple 'rewards programs'. We love our freedom in the U.S., if we do get dragged i

It's no secret that the media is increasingly controlled by a few dominant business interests. Neither is it a secret that government is increasingly controlled by business interests.

* Television the major means of thought control

This has been true for as long as I can remember - television is for now, the most powerful mass-populace informational tool. In those areas where the media is controlled by business interests, television is the media they want to control the most. This could be why they hate internet radio so much.

* Population controlled by perpetual war and its attending material shortages

Raised oil prices have a knock-on effect on every aspect of the world economy. There's also outsourcing and automation, which could be viewed as a domestic kind of war against the workers of the Western nations. The beauty of these approaches versus full-scale conventional war is that it has all the advantages (creation of a new poor working class to repress, nice exploitation opportunities for companies) and few of the disadvantages (full-scale war disrupting the market for consumer products, risk of nuclear strike, etc).

* The war ends when the government says it does (i.e. - never)

Not only is "terrorism" a nebulous concept rather than a nation state, or a particular ethnic group, engaging in a war against it has the happy side effect that for each terrorist you squash, you are helping "them" to recruit more. It could last forever, and I suspect that could be the intent.

Now, is all this a conspiracy, or just emergent behaviour which is a natural outcome of capitalism? I think the latter. But whichever it is, the social system we have sucks for allowing it to happen.

What if they offer a 15% discount and allow you to walk in the shop take what you want and leave without ever having to stop (they bill you later), it would be a fantastic convenience, sure you might not like it but many other people would think its great. I'd bet that if one retail outlet started this then others would follow, the banks would love it as it prevents card fraud, (unless someone has stolen your implanted RFID, after all they will be so secure that they cant be cloned..). Soon enough it wou

These devices could also be used to identify and track people. For example, suppose you participated in some sort of protest or other organized activity. If police agencies sprinkled these tags around, every individual could be tracked and later identified at leisure, with powerful enough tag scanners.

This is right in theory, until it becomes impossible to do that due to everyone requiring it.

Let's go back about 50 years. Back then, it was normal here to get your wage cash on hand at the end of the month. Then gradually checking accounts became usual. And more and more people had them, because they're convenient, and more and more companies realized it's less hassle (and less danger) to simply transfer the money instead of handing out cash.

Today, you cannot get a job here without an account. You want cash? Why? You don't have an account? Sorry, but no job for you. No kidding. No account, no job.

It's a big problem for homeless people here. You don't have a home, you won't get an account. No account, no job. No job, no money to rent an apartment (not to mention that you pretty much need an account to rent one, too). A bank here actually started a service for homeless, sponsored by the city, to get them back onto their feet.

Crazy? Sure, but gradually, piece by piece, we got there. Think it's so impossible that the same might happen with tagging? Today a company requires it, tomorrow you need it to get a passport, then to get a bank account, and you need a bank account... you get the idea.

The problem with that, is while my first reaction is to agree with you, when you think about it more deeply... it would end up being "majority's win", or at least significant portion. There simply isn't enough people in this world (hell, continent or country) that live in a situation where they can realistically feel strongly enough about an issue like this to give up a job over something that doesn't kill them on the spot... And thats not even counting the people that are just plain stupid.If we lived in a